


Easy Love

by blythechild



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Awkward Sexual Situations, Confusion, Cuddling & Snuggling, Denial of Feelings, Developing Relationship, Drinking & Talking, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff and Smut, Friendship/Love, Homoeroticism, Jealousy, Misunderstandings, Multi, Polyamory, Relationship(s), Romantic Friendship, Shameless Smut, Sharing a Bed, Threesome - F/M/M, We Just Love Each Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 18:49:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 20,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8256572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: Hotch is shocked to discover he's in love again, and with Emily Prentiss. But it turns out he's not the only one... This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over the characters herein. It was created as a personal amusement. This story contains adult themes and explicit sexual content - it should not be read by those under the age of 18.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deejaymil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/gifts).



> For Deejaymil. Because she started it.

Sometimes he’s unsure of how it came to pass. But then he takes a moment, thinks about the history of it in its totality and it seems as if it was always meant to turn out this way. And that thought usually renders him silent and amazed for a considerable amount of time. 

He and Emily begin as a drunken slip-up. These things happen, he tells himself even as he feels that he’s violated some secret oath taken _not_ to screw up ever. They’re human, and it turns out wonderfully so when together and down a bottle of scotch. That first night he does things to her that he hasn’t done since college, but with the careful silence and focus that he’s honed in the twenty-five years since. When she twists under him in the dark, tasting of sweat and scotch and being loud in direct proportion to his silence, he gets a sliver of that youthful invincibility back from a time before he locked down ‘Hotshot’ in Hotch’s custom made suits. At dawn when she slips from his bed, he thinks _this can never happen again_ , as well as _I have to have her again_. 

He never knows if she has any hesitation after that first night; she’s always so unerringly professional at work and he’s a bit of a coward about facing up to what has happened. But two weeks later when they step off the jet after a brutal case in New York and he watches her walk to her car and then turn to look at him as if his stare was a pressure she could feel, he shivers with that almost-forgotten thrill of danger again, like hard candy slowly melting on his tongue. Maybe it’s as obvious to her as the press of his suits, even if it comes as a shock to him. She juts her chin at him and smiles, slow and knowing, and says “C’mon” before getting into her car and driving carefully to her place making sure that he’s two car lengths behind her the whole way.

“This is a bad idea,” he licks into her mouth as they stumble through her condo and try to undress each other with urgent hands.

“Are you kidding?” she laughs when she falls back onto the bed and drags him down with her. “Other than you being the boss, and a single dad, and a control freak, and us both being profilers, this is a fucking great idea.”

And when he makes her come with his hands, his mouth, and finally when he pushes into her and she curls and bends around him gratefully like burnt paper, he has to be honest and admit that, yes, it’s a great fucking idea after all.


	2. Chapter 2

Hotch never expects it to last. He has a depressing track record at losing precious things, and it only takes a few months of being with her to realize that Emily is indeed precious to him. He doesn’t mention this to her because it feels awkward on him, words sticky and clogging in his throat until he fears that he’ll start stammering like Reid. If he’d been twenty-five years younger and ferociously brave he’d have said something like _I love how this feels, I crave it all the time - in sleepy darkness, on bright mornings, between the lines of my paperwork and the miles from the office - I feel foolish that I want you this much but you make me eager to be foolish…_ Maybe he’s afraid that she’ll laugh it off. For all of his insights, he has no idea what she’s getting out of this, and he just _can’t_ ask.

One night she asks him to be rougher. Perhaps ‘asks’ isn’t the right term. She tells him “to get out of your head and _be_ yourself with me”, so he binds her to the bed with one of his ties and fucks her with a complete disregard for how his body will hate him in the morning. And it’s glorious. He moves in her with abandon that he can barely control, the sound of the bed and their sweat-sticky bodies filling the silence that he still can’t seem to get past. She eggs him on, with both sass and threats, as he repeatedly brings her to the edge and then backs her away until she’s a tangled, damp mess around him, pupils blown wide as she stares in wonder and begs - _begs_ \- for him to finish it. It instantaneously slides through him, under his skin sharp like a blade, leaving him with an unforgettable understanding of the sensation: he’s lost to her now. He comes so hard that he nearly passes out from the effort and she cries out his name with something new in her voice. Afterwards, he’s still in her, braced above on quivering arms, panting from the strain and the sudden realization of what’s changed. Her arms frame her face still tied to the headboard and her expression gets soft, so soft, losing all of its customary amusement at him.

“Oh, Aaron,” she whispers and then tries to lean up closer to him. “There you are.”

He unties the quick-release knot and dives down into her lips with the last of his energy. Her arms loop around his neck dragging him close as they blend together again. She’s gasping and pulling away to catch her breath and that’s when he realizes that he’s talking and she’s eating his words like she’s starving.

_Emily… What have you done to me? You’re all I want anymore. All that I want…. Oh EmilyEmilyEmily…_


	3. Chapter 3

He’s happy for much longer than he would qualify as ‘normal’. In fact, even thinking the word ‘happy’ feels odd, like trying to sound out and remember an important term in another language. He’s not sure how he managed to live without this feeling for as long as he has, and there are moments when he looks at her and remembers when he only saw ‘Prentiss’ and nothing else. He feels strangely as if she just fell to earth one day - _his_ Emily - and absorbed the Prentiss that he argued and went through doors with. They were separate and different. He wonders if she feels that way as well, because he’s very clearly _not_ Hotch with her - just this inconsistently bold-yet-timid Aaron whose thoughts and eyes and heart trail after her like smoke. 

But for all the things he _isn’t_ when they are together, there are some things that he can’t escape. His silence is this invisible dividing line between them; they are very similar in personality and drives, but Emily’s far more expressive and he senses her increasing frustration at his inability to reciprocate. He wants to. He tries; he’d do anything for her. He doesn’t know what stops him. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it’s his absence of expression that snaps his happiness streak. What does come as a surprise is that the one she chooses to go to seems more emotionally closed off than he is.

Reid is possibly the least likely person for Emily to befriend. This is the prevailing opinion of the team from the moment they meet. While Emily has a generous spirit and Reid is oddly endearing in spite of his quirks, no one can quite believe how quickly, and seamlessly, they become friends. For years, Hotch watches them in amusement, thankful for Emily’s fierce protection of the genius and for Reid’s unflinching faith in the pretty girl that he should’ve been afraid of. Seeing them together - bickering on the jet or planning a movie night or playing ‘physics magic’ - invigorates his belief in the goodness of humans. They are everything that he’s fighting for in this job - every life he saves, every possible horror he averts - because their connection to each other, their _rightness_ , is what people ought to be about no matter who they are on the surface. 

Maybe it’s this desire that blinds Hotch to the obviousness of what’s developing between them. Maybe he doesn’t dig deep enough into either of them, or maybe he trusts Emily so much that he doesn’t believe it’s possible. It’s almost inconsequential when he first notices it: he’s introducing the team to the lead investigator on a case in San Francisco. Reid waves instead of shaking hands, just like always. A half hour later, Hotch looks up as the group sets up their temporary base of operations. J.J. is arranging a remote link-up for Garcia, Rossi is talking to a bunch of LEOs to get the flavor of the investigation, and Emily and Reid are fishing through files and evidence bags trying to put a timeline together. Emily is placing crime scene photos onto a massive whiteboard. Reid hands her pictures he’s pulled from various files that he deems relevant. His hand is on her back holding her steady as she reaches up to tack the pictures. Jealously flares brightly in Hotch for a second, and then his mind whispers _anyone would do that_. He watches them finish with the photos, and then Reid offers his arm as Emily hops down from the chair she’s been standing on. She smiles at him quickly and holds his hand a moment too long before settling into the boxes of documents that they have to wade through. Reid takes the chair beside her and they sit almost close enough to brush shoulders. The smile on Reid’s face melts into concentration as he starts skimming through his first file, but the pink flush to his cheeks takes longer to disappear. Hotch is breathless and stunned across the room.

Five days later as they all fly home, exhausted and brittle around the edges, he watches as Emily sinks into the seat next to a brooding Reid and gently pulls the book he’s forgotten he’s holding from his long fingers. Then, wordlessly, she pulls out her phone and opens a game app showing him how to play with small nudges and flicks. They lean their shoulders together and then Reid’s head comes to rest against Emily’s with a sigh as they both tiredly watch the screen. Hotch’s insides bubble and melt into a searing mess on the other side of the plane. What he’s always felt about them is still there - it’s still this warm, comforting weight at the center of him that he labels as ‘good’ no matter what else he’s feeling. But there’s also this sharp, biting sorrow that he can’t ever be _that_ for her. Reid fulfills something in her that he lacks. The guy with Asperger’s and hysterical germ awareness and a need to keep people at arm’s length can give things to her that Hotch can’t. That night Emily comes by his place and they make love slowly with aching care that forces his heart to break even more because it’s absolutely real - she means every second of it with him. He wants to ask. The words are almost at the back of his teeth when she sighs ‘love you’ wetly into his chest and he’s lost, tumbling in her wake again. There’s dampness on his cheeks but he buries himself in her hair to obliterate it, and instead holds her fiercely until the morning light forces them back to reality.


	4. Chapter 4

He can’t help but notice Reid after that. He’s amazed that he overlooked all of this for so long. Reid’s eyes follow Emily _everywhere_. Hotch is pretty sure that it’s become such a habit that Reid isn’t even aware he’s doing it half the time. It’s just who they are to each other - how the seedling grew over the years. Hotch wonders if Reid even realizes that he’s in love. Emily seems partially aware; sometimes she catches herself and switches to a more demure version of herself, but sometimes she doesn’t and the ease with which she melts into it tells Hotch so much more than if she ever spelled it out in words for him.

They’re on a break from a grueling case in Baltimore when Hotch catches them huddled next to a desk in the corner of the police station. Emily is whispering something into Reid’s ear while staring mischievously at an unsuspecting Morgan. Whatever it is causes Reid to suddenly laugh so hard that his face nearly turns purple from it. Her fingers are poking at the sleeve of his shirt as if she wants to tickle him, and then his hand grabs hers to still them while he coughs and tries to get his control back. Something grey and pitiless like storm water rushes upwards in Hotch and pushes past all of his conflicts and good intentions as he strides over to them.

“Reid,” he frowns and speaks louder than a whisper, which automatically garners him the entire team’s attention. “Have you figured out the significance of the number pattern yet?”

“Uhh, not yet, no…”

“We were just taking a break,” Emily interrupts cautiously.

“Well, maybe you should get back to that instead of canoodling here with Prentiss.” Hotch does his best to ignore Emily and the shocked breath she makes that sounds a lot like his name.

“Y-yes… yes, sir.” Reid scurries away and Hotch feels the full force of four sets of eyes fall on him. This is the most obvious he’s ever been, and there’s an instant when his mind congratulates him on finally expressing something fundamentally important, but then he catches Emily’s glare and feels as if he’s fallen even further from her to a place where light and heat are just a memory. She holds his eyes until it gets painfully pointed, and then she stands and walks away without comment. When he turns back to the rest of the team, no one looks at him.

The case ends a week later with so much blood and violence that the term ‘massacre’ starts popping up in whispers. He’s already had two calls from Washington about it. Reid’s been quiet and withdrawn, his body trying to actively blend into the background whenever he’s in a group of people. Hotch knows without asking that Reid blames himself for the whispers - that if he hadn’t been joking with Prentiss all of those lives might have been saved. It’s the sort of behavior that happens a lot with Reid and Hotch usually nips it in the bud before it becomes crippling but he can’t this time because what he wants to say is _I got jealous and was a fucking idiot to you, so if anyone is to blame for all of the death and carnage this week it’s me and my goddamned fragile ego_. But he won’t. 

Still, he finds himself walking towards the conference room that the team used as an operations hub during the case knowing that Reid is probably there packing up. He stops short at the doorway, tucking himself out of sight when he finds that Emily has beat him to it. Reid is stretched out along an uncomfortable-looking couch face pressed down into his folded arms like he’s hiding. Emily murmurs his name and he twitches but doesn’t move. She perches on the couch next to his hip and then gently lays her hand along his back as she calls his name again. The hand rises and falls as he sighs heavily. Hotch can barely make out what he says.

“I’m fine.”

Emily laughs bitterly as if it’s a rebuke for his obvious lie. Reid rolls his shoulders and then turns to face her, eyes huge and knowing with dark smudges underneath.

“You and Hotch…” he asks eventually.

Hotch watches as Emily’s hand strokes along Reid’s spine. “Yes,” is all she says. He nods slowly, swallowing down hard enough for Hotch to see from a distance. He does it over and over and over again.

“Does he make you happy?” Reid asks in a voice that makes Hotch’s chest split painfully.

He watches as Emily swallows hard too. She nods and Reid just sighs in response. She spends another minute stroking his back and then carefully leans forward along his side and rests her chin against his shoulder, her dark hair spilling into his messy curls. They just lie together like that, breathing and holding onto one another, and Hotch feels as if someone has pulled his heart from his chest and squeezed it in front of his eyes until all of the life it contains spills out over the linoleum. 

“Okay.” Reid’s voice hiccups over the word so he says it again, perhaps to try and solidify it in his mind. 

Hotch turns away then, unable to witness anymore of the heartbreak he’s causing. He walks in a straight line-determination through the squad room, to the fleet vehicle outside, to the airport, and onto the waiting jet. He sits alone and doesn’t speak to anyone for the whole trip home and that suits him just fine. All the while he imagines what he’d feel if Emily had chosen Reid over him, and his imagination makes his pulse race and his brow sweat and his mind scream in panic. He can’t let it happen. He needs her. But so does Reid.

Then he gets a terrible, gut-churning idea. It really isn’t like him - it _isn’t_ \- but he’ll do anything for her…


	5. Chapter 5

He shows up at her place and fully expects her to slam the door in his face, but she just glares at him and shuffles out of the way to let him inside.

“What is it, Aaron?”

“I’m sorry.” 

“Are you?” Her tone suggests that she’d sooner believe he’s the Easter Bunny.

“It’s just… I mean, I don’t… It’s difficult…” he stammers uselessly. “Well… _Reid._ ”

Even in the darkness of her hallway he sees her rolling her eyes at him as she sighs. But the tension leaves her shoulders so he thinks there might be hope.

“Aaron, people are complicated. You know that you have affinities for some and nothing for others. And for all of our psychological insights, most of the time we can’t say _why_ a person strikes us the way they do. We only know what we feel.”

Hotch mulls that for a long, hard moment, and then he folds it up and tucks it away for later because he thinks she’s hit on a sort of fundamental truth that would take him a lifetime to figure out.

“He’s… so pathologically lonely…” she continues but it doesn’t seem as though she knows where she’s going with it. An instant later it hits him that he was pathologically lonely too, before her. She’s managed to align herself with two men who are alike in the unlikeliest of ways.

“Do you love him?” he asks.

“Of course I love him,” she bites back. “Honestly, what sort of a question is that, Aaron?” She pauses but when she speaks again, the fight is gone from her and there’s a wet sort of desperation in its place. “He’s my best friend.”

Hotch pulls her against him and is amazed that she just goes with it and then collapses into his chest. He realizes that there’s an intimacy they’ve built together over time too - just like she and Reid - but different. He prays that she’ll remember moments like these when he brings up the Terrible Idea. Because as he strokes her hair and tries to ignore the fact that she might be snuffling against his shirt, he’s pretty sure that the Terrible Idea is the only way to avoid hurting someone in all of this. And she’s right: we’re a lot less certain about the ‘whys’ in life than the gut decisions that lead us through it.

“I love you too,” she says as she backs up to look him in the eye. “It’s not the same. Not less or more, just… _different_. Please, I need for you to try and understand that…”

He cups her face and draws her close, just brushing her lips with his in the dark. “I do. Really. More than you know.” And he does. To this day he still loves Haley, even after all of the bickering and betrayal and their horrible, final moments. He loves the woman whom he grew up with, and then outgrew, and it rests alongside the terrible longing he has for Emily without any distinctions or recriminations. It’s taken him nearly a half century but he’s come to understand that there’s no hierarchy in love. Haley wasn’t more or less important to him - she just _was_ and always will be, just like Emily is, and he doesn’t feel the slightest twinge of guilt about that. Now he feels the only reason why Emily doesn’t know any of this is because he’s failed to express it. That’s why he hopes that the Idea will make sense to her. Strangely, he wishes that Reid were here to explain it to her.

“I have this… idea, Em…” He kisses her deeply, hoping it won’t be the last time he’s allowed to do so.

“Oh yeah? It must be a doozy if it requires an intro like that.”

Hotch waits - weighs the pros and cons one last time - and then lets everything go. “Be with him.”

“What?” she breathes.

“Be with Reid. He loves you, I’m sure of-”

“ _Be with him?_ This isn’t something I can just fuck out of me, Aaron.” She pushes back from him as her indignation rings off the walls. He has to wrangle this before he loses her for good.

“I’m not suggesting a one time affair.”

“Well, what the fuck are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting that… you be with both of us. Together or separately - we can figure out the logistics. As long as we’re honest about what’s happening, I think it could work.”

There’s a long, excruciating pause before she simply says “ _What?!?_ ”

“Emily,” he sighs, trying to will himself to be calm about this. “You get something that you need from both of us, something that the other can’t give you. And you give us something that we can’t live without too. I saw you two in the Baltimore conference room… it was like watching a building collapse in on itself. I can’t do that to you or him.”

She doesn’t say anything. He can almost _feel_ her blinking in the darkness.

“It’s like you said: we can’t help the affinities we feel,” he says quietly. “You’re… so important to me, Em. But why should Reid have to suffer because of it? How can I ask you to step back from that just to give me a sense of security? That’s mean and narrow, and I’d like to think that we aren’t that kind of people.”

He reaches for her, can’t stand the thought that the Terrible Idea will be the thing that drives her away, not his lack of expression or haunting silences… He finds her arm and clasps it, and a second later her hand grabs his arm back. Painfully.

“I… I can’t believe that your solution is a three-way, or… an open relationship, or whatever the hell we’re calling this…”

“Only if you want it, Emily. And only if Reid does.”

“I…” There’s a noticeable pause. “I think I want this.”

And suddenly his Idea is no longer theoretical. He’s placed the possibility in her mind for her to think about being with Reid, and he can’t take it back. His stomach twists nervously. _What if you lose this bet?_ his mind whispers.

“Then… I guess that just leaves Reid.”

“Yeah,” she huffs, obviously still shocked. “I’ll… talk to him about it…”

“Of course. You didn’t expect _me_ to, did you? Just try and picture that scenario…”

She laughs, rolling and relieved, and then pulls him in and kisses him. “There’s something appealing about you trying to explain this and him being too stupefied to process it. It would all be meaningful eyebrow arches and nervous hand gestures.”

He slips between her lips and sucks until he gets the moan he craves, the one that sometimes sounds like _yeeeesssssss_.

“He might not go for it.” If that’s the case then they are right back where they started with a single relationship and three quietly miserable people.

“He will,” she says simply.

“How do you know?” He kisses up the side of her face - her cheek, her temple, into the warmth of her hair. “He’s so young, Emily. Do you know what you’re doing?”

She laughs tenderly, grabbing him by the chin and then pouring that sound into his mouth as she skims her fingers into the short hair at the back of his head. “I’ve never really known what I was doing when it comes to this.”

He lifts her by her waist until she wraps her legs around his hips. He thinks that might be a lie because she seems to have known what to do with him from day one. They wouldn’t have made it this far if she hadn’t. At the very least, she’s patient, and they might need plenty of patience to deal with Spencer Reid. He kisses her roughly as she bumps against his growing arousal; he wants her all to himself tonight, but has to admit that talking about her being with Reid has set off some alarming spikes of interest way down deep in a part of him that he hasn’t paid attention to in years. He pulls her closer and rubs meaningfully as he stumbles blindly in the direction of her bedroom.

“That’s it,” she smiles and then slips her tongue against his. “Take me to bed and show me why this is all worth fighting for.”

And he does, aggressively, attentively, and with an escalating sense of the danger that drew him to her in the first place.


	6. Chapter 6

Prentiss: So, there’s good news & bad news. What do u want to hear first?  
Hotch: Bad news  
Prentiss: Told Reid the idea & he promptly had a panic attack  
…  
Hotch: Is there more bad news, or is that it?  
Prentiss: That’s it  
Hotch: Is he ok?  
Prentiss: That’s part of the good news. We may have accidentally hit upon a cure for panic attacks.  
Hotch: ???  
Prentiss: Once his big brain figured out what was on offer, his body decided that panic was the wrong reaction & stopped it dead in its tracks. I’m surprised that he didn’t actually pivot 180 degrees tbh…  
Hotch: So, he’s in?  
Prentiss: Yes. But he has stipulations.  
Hotch: Such as?  
Prentiss: We all have to be together.  
…  
Hotch: _Together_ together?  
Prentiss: In the same location at the very least. He wants things to be transparent, at least in the beginning.  
…  
Hotch: OK  
Prentiss: You sure?  
Hotch: Not really, but it was my idea, right?  
Prentiss: It sure was. You surprise me all the time, Hotchner ;)  
Hotch: Great. When this kills me please put that on my gravestone: here lies Aaron Hotchner, insecure but surprising  
Prentiss: ;-*


	7. Chapter 7

The Terrible Idea turns out terribly. They’re all at Emily’s place because Reid is immovable on his ‘together’ rule, but Hotch doesn’t think he can _watch_ so he’s sitting in the living room opposite the master bedroom trying to do paperwork as Emily drags Reid through the bedroom doorway. Reid shoots him an incredibly guilty look before he disappears and Hotch smiles tightly, trying to reassure him while suppressing the urge to charge across the room and bellow ‘get your hands off her’. He understands the instinct enough to control it, and, really, the intellectual part of him doesn’t have a problem with it being _Reid_ at all, but he doesn’t know how to convince the rest of him, let alone convince two others.

They leave the door open (probably another Reid rule) and from where Hotch is sitting he gets a snapshot of what’s happening. He trains his eyes on his laptop screen until they hurt and the words blur meaninglessly, but he refuses to look. The silence of the condo stretches until it becomes a physical thing that seems to baffle everything. He doesn’t know how long it’s been but his mind itches at the silence because he _knows_ what Emily’s like and it’s just too damned quiet for things to be going well. And he wants them to go well, doesn’t he? Then he wonders how he’d react if he heard Emily moaning the way she moans for him…

He looks up without thought and sees them sitting on the bed. Emily’s lost her blouse but nothing else and Reid is still fully clothed. They’re leaning together, hesitant like all new lovers are, but Reid’s hand is brushing over her arm, along her neck, against her cheekbone with such aching reverence that Hotch is instantly magnetized by it. It’s not passionate, it’s adoring, and somehow that moves something in Hotch. The part of him that wants to toss Reid out on his ass is silenced. All he can focus on are Reid’s hands. Hotch has never touched Emily that way, although he understands that gesture thoroughly - it’s how he feels about her every time they are close. He watches Reid’s agile expressiveness and wonders what it would feel like to receive a touch like that. Heat rises to his face and he swallows hard.

Emily’s lips are moving. They hover just next to Reid’s but he doesn’t push to close the gap even as his eyes slip shut in surrender. She keeps whispering, bumping his nose, brushing his cheeks, nuzzling his jaw in an effort to draw him in. Hotch can see the flush staining her face and scorching down her neck to her bra line, but she’s waiting for Reid to act. It must be one of _her_ rules. Hotch is momentarily impressed by Reid’s restraint. Then, Reid’s eyes open and his expression is so conflicted, so pained that Emily backs off a little when she sees it. Hotch doesn’t blame her, he’d react the same way. Reid hesitates and then turns away like he’s changed his mind. His hand falls from her face and maybe that sparks something in Emily because Hotch can hear the sadness in her voice when she calls out Reid’s name. Reid shakes his head once, forehead creased like he’s confused for a second, and then he turns back, cups her face and brings it soundly to his mouth. And there’s absolutely nothing gentle about his kiss. Even at a distance Hotch can see that it’s hot and wet and deep, tinged with an all-or-nothing desperation that makes Emily bend into him and sends an unexpected spike of lust through Hotch at the same time. And now Hotch wonders how it would feel to be kissed like that by Emily. Or Reid.

Reid’s fingers slide into Emily’s hair and tighten possessively. His mouth breaks from hers long enough to moan, deep and lingering, as if she’s relieving the ache of a lifetime in him. Their lips reconnect and Hotch imagines the soft sound they make, slipping over one another again and again, hungry, urgent and grateful in a way that makes you melt and sets your nerve endings on fire. Hotch is breathing through his mouth, warmth abandoning his limbs and pooling in his chest, pushing lower. On his forgotten laptop, his hands shake.

Reid shuffles closer to Emily on the bed and she makes a welcoming noise. He pulls away from her for a second and gives her a brilliant smile with his flushed mouth, and she smiles back just as amazed. He turns for an instant, perhaps lost in the dizzying fog of what they are doing, and his eyes graze across Hotch sitting and staring. The joy bursts immediately as Reid’s eyes widen and the pained lines return to his face. He lets Emily go as if she’s on fire and he stands before he realizes that it highlights how excited he’s become. 

“Spencer…” Emily gasps, reaching for him too late.

Reid grabs his suit jacket from the bed and uses it as a shield to cover himself. His eyes flick to Emily, and then to the floor, and then briefly back to her again as he chokes out “I-I can’t…”. Then he’s heading for the door as Emily fumbles after him still in shock at the sudden reversal of events.

“Spencer!”

Reid peers up at Hotch as he exits the bedroom, and the conflict there makes him look ten years older than he is. Hotch fails to react, just staring blankly at him instead.

“I’m sorry,” Reid whispers to him a moment before he ducks his gaze and all but sprints to the front door. There are hurried footfalls, a slammed door, and then a dangerously subdued huff as Emily finally emerges from the bedroom buttoning her blouse.

“Well. You made a mess of that,” she hisses, face scarlet and refusing to look at him. He can feel his eyebrows rising in a ‘Who Me?’ expression.

“I was doing paperwork,” he says pointing to the form on his screen that he hasn’t added a single word to.

“ _Aaron_.” Her whole body shakes as his name rips out of her chest, and there’s a wetness to her tone that she tries to gulp back. “Reid fucking loves you, okay? He can’t stand the thought of letting you down. That’s why he needed you here - he needed to know that you could accept him having me. Jesus! You saw how he kissed me… even with all of _that_ pulsing through him, it still couldn’t trump his desire not to hurt _you_.”

She runs her fingers through her hair and there’s a moment of panic that flickers across her face before she gets her anger back. “You suggested this. You convinced us it was okay. But instead you’re lurking out here, staring like a goddamned guard dog…”

She points at the front door and her eyes gets alarmingly glassy in an instant. “I may have just lost him. For good. Do you _get that?_ ”

“Emily…” he whispers, feeling her desperation by proxy. “I’m sorry…”

“You’re always sorry,” she murmurs crisply and her words slice him. “Go home, Aaron. There’s no way you’re getting lucky tonight in lieu of him. I wanna be alone.”

He moves quickly, packing up his things and striding to the front door with as much dignity as he can muster in the failure that he’s caused. He whispers “I’m sorry” again before he leaves, looking for a small sign of forgiveness on her face. She nods once, sadly, and then turns away, and both his heart and his stomach attempt to leap from his body as an offering for his mistake. He watches her walk away, and then walks away himself, shutting the door quietly behind him. He stands on her stoop and has a small, quiet freak-out. 

Then he straightens his spine, squares his shoulders, and puts his Hail Mary move into motion.


	8. Chapter 8

Reid’s apartment door doesn’t have a peephole and Hotch is pretty sure that’s the only reason why he opened it at all. His face goes all shocked and pale as he stares at Hotch through the crack between the door and the frame, but when he speaks, his voice is surprisingly even.

“What are you doing here? It’s late…”

Hotch tries to look sheepish, less intimidating. “We need to talk. May I come in? It won’t take long.”

Reid’s expression becomes indecipherable but he lets him in anyway. Hotch murmurs his thanks as he crosses the threshold. He turns once he hears the door click shut and then the two of them stand there in pregnant silence for a painful thirty seconds. Reid stares at his feet and rocks on them gently. Hotch decides that if there’s any hope at all for him, he has to do his best to be _Not Hotch_ in this moment.

“I screwed up this evening,” he sighs and runs his hand through his hair, which he knows will make it stand up in spikes. Reid’s gaze locks onto Hotch’s instantly. “It was my plan, but the practicality of it was something I didn’t adequately prepare for.”

“Hotch, maybe this isn’t-”

“Spencer,” Hotch interrupts and waits until Reid comprehends that he isn’t there as his boss right now, but as a man in need of help from a friend. “She loves you. You know that, right?”

“I… I…” Reid blinks and then clears his throat. “I love her too.”

“I know,” Hotch smiles and it must be such a smile because it changes Reid’s nervous hesitance into curiosity instantaneously. “The way you touched her tonight… I know that feeling. I know it like I know Jack’s face or Haley’s laugh. That’s how I feel about her too, although I’ve never been able to put it into words before.”

Reid just stares back at him, stunned.

“You know that I… love you too, don’t you, Spencer?” Hotch asks it so quietly that it feels more like an exhalation than words. “You could never disappoint me - I know what kind of man you are and… there are times when I wish I were more like you.”

Reid shakes his head ‘no’ in disbelief.

“It’s true.” He lets that sink in for a while before continuing. “What you saw tonight wasn’t anger or jealousy… well, maybe it was in the beginning, but that disappeared almost immediately.”

Hotch is shocked by his own frankness. He can’t remember the last time he opened up to someone this easily.

“What was it then?” Reid asks cautiously.

Hotch shrugs. “Wonder. Longing maybe.” He feels a twinge of hesitation at the term and at the warm, snaking tendril that it elicits both then and now. He feels his eyes flick to Reid’s lips and then quickly away, hoping that he didn’t notice the lapse. “I’m… I’m not that way, for whatever reason, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t _feel_ it. Emily needs to see that though. She sees it in you. She sees different things in me. And she needs them both, just like we both need her.”

Reid ducks his eyes again, lines crinkling the corners in conflict.

“We’re in love, Spencer, all three of us. I’m not passing judgment on why it’s worked out this way. I just want us all to be happy.” He takes a deep breath. “Please give it another try. For her, if not for yourself. Or for me, because tonight probably would’ve been great if I’d managed to be less uptight about it.”

Reid gives him an appraising look and his consummate shyness dims a little in the process. “If I do, you need to be a part of it. An _actual_ , participating player. It’s the only way it’ll work.”

Hotch takes in the steady, hazel gaze, the dark circles under it, the sharp cheekbones and the long, enticing hands that have been uncharacteristically still for this whole conversation. He remembers the way Reid kissed Emily - its beautiful, ecstatic abandon - and he remembers the curiosity it sparked in him from out of nowhere. He’s never looked at Reid, or any man, with interest before, but as the possibility wedges itself, sliver-thin, into his consciousness he doesn’t find it unappealing.

“Okay,” he murmurs, feeling his cheeks heat. Reid’s stare doesn’t falter, and Hotch decides in that moment that Reid is a lot more complicated than anyone thinks he is.

“Alright,” Reid nods. “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s all I ask.” Hotch smiles again. He’s probably breaking a record or something: two smiles in the same conversation. Then, flushed with this minor victory, he extends his hand just to see what will happen. “Thank you, Spencer.”

Reid stares at Hotch’s hand for such a length of time that Hotch wonders what he could possibly be considering about it that would take so long. And then, Reid clasps it and holds on. Perhaps he doesn’t know that movement is part of a handshake - Hotch could understand that given that he doesn’t do them, ever. Reid’s hand is warm and his grip is surprisingly firm. Hotch takes a step forward and then cups Reid’s elbow with his free hand, like he does with friends or the few colleagues he really trusts. Reid’s eyes snap to his face again and his expression is amazed; clearly, this particular tick of Hotch’s isn’t lost on him. Hotch’s thumb skims across Reid’s hand once as he thinks about the way Reid’s fingers mapped Emily’s edges earlier, and then he murmurs his thanks again and lets his hands drop to his sides. The loss of contact snaps them out of their mutual trance and Hotch takes the opportunity to shuffle towards the door. Reid trails after him at a respectable distance. As Hotch crosses the threshold again, Reid mumbles his name and he turns back.

“You say that you’re not… what’s the word?” Reid gestures airily.

“Expressive,” Hotch offers.

“Yeah, expressive. But you expressed yourself just fine to me. Why do you suppose that is?”

It’s Hotch’s turn to be awkward and bewildered. “I… I’m not sure…”

“Huh.” Reid shrugs with a look of ‘I’m-gonna-consider-that-and-get-back-to-you’ on his face and then unceremoniously shuts the door on Hotch.

Okay, so neither one of them is a paragon of sensitivity.


	9. Chapter 9

The second time is better than the first if only because no one runs away before anything happens. But it’s awkward and you could probably find hotter scenarios on almost any generic porn site on the web. They’re all naked and in the same room this time, and Hotch even coaxes himself onto the bed with them once they get going. But the atmosphere is tense, as if they’re all too present, and they can’t seem to maintain eye contact. There are none of Reid’s adoring caresses or soul-baring kisses. In fact, apart from some perfunctory making out to start with, Reid doesn’t kiss Emily at all. Emily is quietly upset by this, but Hotch is surprised to discover that he is as well. He’s turned on but that’s only because there’s so much flesh on offer, and he knows that his body is just going through the motions. There are no startling arousals or keen moments that capture his attention and won’t let go.

Reid uses his fingers to get Emily going and then conveniently goes down on her to avoid any conversation or seeing how crestfallen she is. She twists and moans under his mouth but it’s nothing extraordinary to Hotch’s eyes - just her body reacting to some skill and attention. She gets close and then Reid pulls away. Hotch prepares himself for watching him finally fuck her, but Reid backs up off the bed entirely, his cock bouncing, hard but untouched, against his thigh. He looks at Hotch then and nods his head once towards Emily. Hotch doesn’t understand what’s happening.

“Aren’t you going to…” He can’t finish the question.

“Spence…” Emily huffs, not pleased about being frustratingly stalled in an already frustrating situation.

“She needs you, Aaron,” Reid murmurs, and nods his head in her direction again. 

He’s clearly not going to finish what he’s started. Hotch spends another moment blinking, and then turns to Emily, who’s doing her best to roll with what’s going on, and Hotch pushes into her instead. She takes him, wrapping herself around him with practiced ease, and he makes her come efficiently with a small burst of pleasure and the sharp arc of his hips that she enjoys. She’s loud when she comes and Hotch knows that’s for Reid’s benefit so that he feels better about the whole thing, but when Hotch looks over at him standing beyond the bed working his cock furiously, he sees that Reid isn’t with them anymore. He’s panting hard, his whole upper body moving in one sinuous wave that ends with his hand working over the head of his cock, but his eyes are firmly shut and Hotch thinks that he’s very far away indeed. Maybe he’s with them, more freely, inside his head, or maybe it’s someone else entirely. All Hotch knows for certain is that it is the most genuine Reid has been all evening, and he’s all by himself. 

It goes on for ten, fifteen, twenty seconds, twitching and gasping as he strains into his own hand. And then Hotch is transfixed at how all of that tension suddenly drains out of Reid as he comes with a relieved stutter and nearly stumbles. Hotch is off the bed and moving before he can make the decision, just one stride to place a steady hand on Reid’s elbow and prevent him from losing his balance. Hotch breathes his name and Reid’s eyes snap open to see him six inches in front of him.

“Hey,” Hotch murmurs. “Are you okay?”

Reid blinks like he doesn’t know where he is, and then he dips forward dangerously close to Hotch before he suddenly snaps his head back.

“I’m fine. Sorry.” He steps away from Hotch and out of his grip.

“Spence?” Emily is giving him a look of real concern, sheet drawn up over her in sudden modesty.

“S’okay, Em.” He smiles at her. The kind of smile that they share all the time, and Hotch watches as some of her anxiety automatically lessens at the sight of it. She knows that this is a disaster and that he’s hiding something, but she’s reassured that he’s still him and that he still cares even if they’ve done their best to ruin things. He shuffles over to her and drops to his knees on the carpet, a hand gently falling into her hair and stroking it out over the pillows as he continues to smile. “Probably just low blood sugar. Nothing to worry about.”

He brushes her lips with his and breathes her breath when she opens under him. He hasn’t shown this sort of tenderness all evening and she’s clearly thrown for a loop by it, wanting it with the sudden ache of their first, failed encounter. He kisses her softly, gentleness leaking out of him as his tension did when he came moments earlier, and then he pulls back, skimming her cheek once with a fingertip before he stands and turns to find his clothes.

“I… ummm, I’m sorry to do this… but I gotta go.”

Hotch is moving again. “Give me a minute to dress and I’ll drive you,” he says.

“No.” Reid turns quickly, his expression alarmed. “I mean, that’s not necessary and it’s late.”

“Spencer,” Hotch walks up to him and cups his elbow again, not concerned at all that he’s naked. “After _whatever_ just happened to you, I’d feel better if I saw you home.”

Reid stares at him for a moment and Hotch feels one of Reid’s hands wrap around his free arm at his side. His fingers skim the sensitive skin just above Hotch’s hip in the process.

“Thank you, Aaron, but I’m okay. Really,” he says quietly. “I… just want to go home. I can make it on my own.”

“But, Spencer, _you don’t have to_ ,” Hotch bends to stare at him and emphasize his words. “That’s the point I’m making.”

“I-I know.” Reid blinks. “But I’m still gonna go, okay? It’ll be fine.”

Reid forces a smile and then slips from Hotch’s grip again. He collects up the rest of his things and dresses like he’s practicing a fire drill, and then he mumbles a goodbye and ridiculously waves at them both. Hotch actually finds himself waving back. He sinks down onto the mattress next to Emily as he hears the front door latch.

“He’s never coming back,” Hotch murmurs with an odd, cold sensation straight through the center of him. Emily sighs heavily next to him.

“No, he isn’t.”

She doesn’t say anything else, and though he expects to stay the night, Hotch isn’t all that surprised when twenty minutes later the haunting silence between them forces him to dress and go back to his place instead.


	10. Chapter 10

Weeks pass and it is both fine and awful simultaneously. Fine because Reid is still Reid and there’s no awkwardness at work, or at least no more awkwardness than usual. Awful because Emily’s heartbroken and hiding it so efficiently that Hotch thinks when it finally comes home to roost it’ll flatten everything in its path and just leave a charred crater at the center of her where the best parts of her used to live. Hotch is finding the knowledge of her anxiety hard to handle. He tries to coax her into discussing it but she just brushes it all aside, and this really isn’t his strength in the first place. He wants to ease her - after all it was his stupid idea that brought them to this point - but he can’t seem to find the right words or a moment when he can reach out to convince her to break down with him. And strangely there’s a part of him that’s mourning as well. His unexpected closeness with Reid when there was still a chance this would work gave him… _something_ \- a heated hopefulness which has now been snatched back. Hotch can’t call it anything other than ‘possibility’ and yet its sudden absence makes him drift off when he least expects it, staring at nothing with a kind of sad finality.

He and Emily continue on together but they are more serious, as if that’s what they owe to the effort now that they can no longer pretend that they are unaware of how Reid feels. The danger that made him feel young has evaporated under the press of responsibility; he loves her - that hasn’t changed - but he thinks it’s just a matter of time before she walks away from his silence and guilt.

It’s dark in the bullpen when he wanders out of his office and sees her still working at her desk. Opposite her, Reid’s jacket is draped over the back of his chair but all of his stuff is gone. There’s something about this image that sends a spike of panic ringing through Hotch. He’s overcome by a hysterical, single impulse: _I just want to keep us together._ He pulls up behind Reid’s chair and lays a hand along his jacket. Emily looks up and offers him a half-hearted smile that’s become her go-to ‘I’m fine’ expression over the past few weeks.

“Is Reid still here?” he asks quietly.

“No,” she sighs and turns back to her computer monitor. “He had a meeting at the Federal Prosecutor’s office late this afternoon. He must’ve forgotten his coat.”

Her mouth lifts in a smirk before fading away just as quickly. Both of them know that Reid could forget his right arm if it wasn’t attached to him. The thought makes Hotch smile as well, and then another desperate spike lances through him.

“Want to grab some dinner?”

She turns to him again and tries to erase her fatigue. “Thanks, but not tonight. I’m gonna finish up here and then head home. Catch up on some rest, I think…”

He nods but feels like they are beginning their long descent towards the end. He frantically wants to stop this fracturing apart because he loves her so much that he fears parts of him will tear away when she leaves. If only he could tell her… If only he could get her to talk about this…

“Have you spoken to him yet?” he blurts. “We could try again. We just need to-”

“Aaron,” she interrupts but it’s quiet, resigned. “It’s done. We took a shot and it didn’t work.”

“Maybe it didn’t work because none of us knows _how_ it’s supposed to work. It’s not like any of us has done this before.”

“You’re right, but I still don’t think it should be as traumatic as it has been.” She gives him another sad smile. “Reid would say that human monogamy is a social construct, not a biological one. If it was going to happen it should have been… easier.”

A long moment of silence passes between them. “I feel responsible,” he murmurs. _For your sadness, for ending us, for ruining your friendship…_

“Let it go, Aaron. Time to move on.”

He steps around Reid’s chair until he’s next to her desk, looking down at her shadowed expression in the light cast by her desk lamp. “And how exactly are you going to move on from loving your best friend who sits eight feet away from you five days a week?”

It’s like he’s slapped her even though his tone is soft. She blinks rapidly as her spine stiffens and she turns back to face the report on her screen. When she finally speaks, her voice is cold, dismissive. “I’m a grown woman, not a teenager. I’ll figure it out.”

And their descent continues…

Hotch sighs and turns away, eyes landing on the rumpled suit jacket hanging crookedly off Reid’s chair. His fingers find their way to it again, skimming the fabric and the off-the-rack seams that imprecisely shelter a very precise man. He thinks about the way Reid kisses, about the way his hands move, about the tremendous emotion that Hotch has only seen glimpses of - and thinking these things makes him think about himself. A dark dampness chills him, like the sweat from a fever you just can’t shake. 

_We might have been known. He might have been the making of us…_

He straightens the jacket along the chair back so it hangs evenly and then he soothes the shoulder seams gently with his palm. From the corner of his eye he thinks he sees a flash of color, movement, but when he looks up at the glass entryway there’s no one there. He squares his shoulders and tries to pack away his sentimentality in the process. He walks away from Emily without saying goodbye.


	11. Chapter 11

It’s his forty-eighth birthday and, even though he couldn’t care less about the day in general, he doesn’t do anything to stop the team from invading his condo with enough food, booze, and mischief to put a college frat house to shame. He sits back and smiles benevolently as Jessica casts him a knowing eyebrow arch when she picks up Jack for a sleepover, and as Rossi pushes drink after drink into his hands until he loses count. They’re all treating him like he’s ten years younger than he is, which is sweet, especially considering that this is the fourth year in a row that he’s turned forty-eight. It’s like they’re all in on a poorly disguised conspiracy to remind him that he used to be more fun than he is and it’s not too late to regress to that behavior. 

Rossi has cornered him on his balcony and is threatening to introduce him to some women he’s met through his first ex-wife, who increasingly appears likely to become his _fourth_ wife. Rossi is quite aggressive on the subject, even going so far as to suggest that there might be negative health implications from the lack of sex that Hotch is obviously not getting in Rossi’s imagination. Hotch chuckles and asks Rossi to please stop talking about his balls so casually. 

“I wouldn’t have to if you took getting laid more seriously,” Rossi slurs into his drink. “You know that’s it’s GOOD for you, right? And it doesn’t feel half bad either…”

“I haven’t forgotten what sex feels like, Dave,” Hotch smiles indulgently and then the scotch sways him into a sudden serious mood. “Sometimes it’s not always so easy.”

He thinks about Emily, who’s somewhere inside wearing a stunning wrap-around red dress that made him temporarily lose the power of speech when he answered the door and saw her in it. She laughed softly at his expression and patted his chest as she walked past him, and she’s been shooting him sparkling looks ever since which suggest that their unspoken fracturing seems to have been put on hold, if only for tonight. He’s pretty drunk and irrecoverably in love, and he hopes that’s enough impetus to carry him through one more spectacular evening in her bed before the fall begins again.

“Bullshit,” Rossi huffs, and Hotch strains to remember what he just said that causes the response. “Sex is the easiest thing in the world. It’s our brains that screw it all up on us. If it were just up to our bodies, it’d be like the last days of Caligula around here.”

“Listen, Dave, I’m all for a good party but I put my foot down at Roman orgies in my living room.”

“What I’m saying is: we all think too much. You especially. You live too much inside your head, Aaron. If all we needed was ourselves in this life, we wouldn’t feel so fucking alone all the time. Just… stop thinking for a while. And follow your dick. It’s your goddamned birthday…”

Hotch blinks at Rossi and wonders how much his friend _actually sees_ of him on a daily basis. “I’m gonna go get another drink in an attempt to erase this entire conversation from my memory.”

Rossi grins perversely and slaps him hard on the back as he goes. “Atta boy…”

Hotch weaves through the crowd on the way to the kitchen. Morgan and Garcia are dancing to music that is too loud and about two decades too young for Hotch to appreciate. J.J. and Will are laughing at them, and alternating between that and making out in a way that makes Hotch both uncomfortably warm and grateful that they are still okay after everything that’s happened to them. Blake and her husband are there, as well as Callahan and her man, and he’s touched that they both came. Lewis is hanging out in a corner in deep conversation with an impressive looking guy from the Federal Prosecutor’s office who’s ten years younger than her. In fact, there are a shocking amount of drunken lawyers in his place right now. He tries not to think that it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. 

The only person he hasn’t seen yet is Reid and he’s trying not to feel incredibly upset at that. It’s not unexpected, of course, but it still hurts. A lot. More scotch will probably help. More scotch, and finding Emily, locking them in his home office, peeling her out of that dress and daring her to moan loud enough for their friends to hear them down the hall. He wants to fuck her with the reckless joy they had in the beginning, with her heels digging into his back and her bare ass squeaking across the surface of his desk. He wants to hear her beg for him again, he wants to let go enough to beg her in return. _I love you more than I can stand. Please don’t leave. Tell me how to fix us. I’ll do anything… anything…_

He stumbles into the kitchen and finds Emily there, but she’s not alone. Reid showed up after all and he’s standing very close to her in the light cast from the bulbs beneath his cabinets. One hand is cradling her face, and even in the indirect light Hotch can tell that her expression is enchanted, almost relieved. He’s assailed by a mix of confusing impulses: shock, curiosity, jealousy, joy, and yes, way underneath it all, a thick, primordial lust that only seconds ago wanted one person in his office but now wants two. Emily’s eyes open and then flick to Hotch standing in the entryway. Reid’s eyes follow hers. Then she slowly reaches out her hand to Hotch, silently invited him into their circle. Hotch’s mouth gets dry but he shuffles forward without thinking, clasping her fingers on instinct as he comes to stand very close to both of them.

“You came,” he huffs as his eyes flit to Reid’s and then away in an inexplicable bout of shyness. “Thank you. That means a lot.”

“It’s your birthday. I couldn’t miss it.” Reid’s expression is open and a little amazed. He appears completely sober, and Hotch feels slightly uncomfortable as he senses a power shift in Reid’s direction as a result.

“We’ve been talking,” Emily murmurs, a secret smile on her lips that Hotch wants to dip in and taste.

“Oh?” he says instead.

“Yes.” Reid says and then doesn’t elaborate. He stares at Hotch pointedly and Hotch wonders how drunk he is that he seems to have missed something important that’s passed in so few words. Reid cocks his head as he stares, as if he’s considering something, and then he presses on ignoring Hotch’s inebriation. He nods at Emily. “She’s beautiful tonight.”

Hotch turns to look at her in that dangerous dress. “She’s always beautiful.”

He can see her blush in the faint light. He smiles, glorying in her beauty and the warm swell of scotch coursing through his blood stream and the knowledge that, even now, he can still make her blush. He feels a broad hand with long fingers press along his back, and a part of him sits up at attention and whispers ‘hello’.

“Kiss her,” Reid murmurs. “The way you’ve always wanted to, Aaron.”

He doesn’t even think about it, he just does what he’s told. His fingers slide into her hair, curling around her neck and drawing her gently to him. He meets her mouth breathlessly, and then remembers how that process works when she opens up to him and he steals hers. They move soft and slowly together, like they’re alone and have all night, slipping over one another until they have to come up for air. When they break apart a tender ‘oh’ escapes her and her cheeks are even redder than before. He did exactly what was asked of him because Hotch has never kissed her like that before even though it’s been in him every time he’s reached for her. He keeps her close, brushing her face with his lips so that he can feel the heat of her skin on them. His fingers tangle in her grip tightly at their sides.

“You don’t know…” he mouths against her.

“Have you ever told her?” Reid prompts.

Emily makes a questioning noise but Hotch silences it when he nuzzles into her cheek and then brushes his lips to her ear. “You’re everything to me. But I know I’m losing you and… I’m frightened.”

“Aaron,” she gasps. It comes out strained and when he pulls back to look at her, there’s shock painted all over her. She drops his hand and then clasps him close, gripping his jaw instead as she stares at him. “You know I love you.”

“Is it enough?” he says miserably thanks to the scotch. “Look at what I’ve done to us. I only wanted to make you happy, but I just ended up hurting us all.”

“You didn’t,” she gulps quickly shaking her head.

“We’ve all had a hand in this,” Reid adds quietly. “But it doesn’t have to be over. Not if we just… let go of our need to control it a little.”

Hotch feels Reid’s palm rub gently along his spine and then he turns to look at him. His eyes seem huge, like they are inviting him in, and Hotch wonders how much of his sudden urge to fall towards Reid is from him and how much is from the scotch.

“It’s not over?” Hotch asks hesitantly while staring at Reid’s mouth unabashedly. He watches as Reid shakes his head once ‘no’ and his lips tighten uncertainly. Then, after a moment, his mouth falls open in a small sigh and Hotch just _moves_. He switches his grip from Emily to Reid and cups the man’s jaw tightly as he pulls him to his mouth. Reid freezes up for an instant as their lips meet, and then he groans a little and presses back against Hotch. Their chests bump together as Reid’s hand on Hotch’s back pulls him painfully close. Hotch’s free hand fumbles until it finds Reid’s elbow and cups it meaningfully which makes Reid open up wantonly under his mouth and Hotch sinks in deep with a grateful breath. He’s lightheaded with relief and so thankful that this man has decided to pull them all back from the edge. Hotch thinks that he just might be drunk enough to wrangle the feeling into words, but he doesn’t want to give up Reid’s mouth yet. Not yet.

Reid tastes like coffee and Emily’s lipstick, and the brush of his five o’clock shadow against Hotch’s skin sends an unambiguous flare over his body that makes Hotch want to consume Reid whole. He’s no longer concerned with what the scotch wants and decides to listen to the sound of Rossi’s voice in his head that’s telling him to turn his brain off for a while. They pull apart suddenly when they hear an unmistakable ‘holy shit’. Flushed and still holding one another they stare for a second before they both turn towards the sound and Emily’s wide-eyed expression.

Hotch struggles to clear his throat and make his voice even. His face feels like he’s on fire. “Is… is this a problem?”

“It’s… uh… no, it’s… well, it’s really fucking hot is what it is…”

Hotch looks from her to Reid, and Reid looks a little mortified by her statement. But he’s still holding onto Hotch like his life depends on it.

“I just never thought I’d get this lucky,” she continues as she steps up and wraps an arm around each of them to pull them in.

“Lucky?” Reid meeps.

“Yeah. The two men I love might come to love each other as well. That’d be too perfect.” She brushes her lips against Reid’s, and then over Hotch’s, licking when she pulls back with a satisfied purr. “But at the very least if we’re all attracted to one another, it should make the sex more enjoyable.”

Hotch wraps an arm around her waist and swiftly dips in after her mouth. He pulls until she whimpers and she begins sucking the taste of Reid from his tongue. He’s not thinking about anything but the swell of her lips, the warmth of Reid’s breath on his cheek as he watches them, and the libidinous pull of the lock on his office door.

“I want everyone out of my house now but you two.” He pulls away from Emily and then kisses Reid hard. “Anyone got any ideas?”

Reid’s mouth makes a soft popping sound when he pulls away from Hotch. Hotch, on the other hand, makes disappointed whine. Reid smiles, all teeth and excited brightness.

“Leave it to me,” he says, and then bounds out of the kitchen on his mission.

Hotch pulls Emily against him from waist to shoulders and buries himself in her hair, nuzzling her neck until he finds the right spot and then bites down as she collapses like a house of cards into him.

“What do you think he’s gonna do?” He licks the bite mark.

“Whatever it is,” she gasps warmly when he moves closer and she feels his hardness. “It’ll be genius. Guaranteed.”


	12. Chapter 12

Whatever Reid came up with takes exactly seventeen minutes to execute. When Hotch hears the slightly drunken umbrage of Rossi in the front hallway, and then the click of his front door followed by a blissful silence, he almost can’t believe that Reid pulled it off as quickly and efficiently as he has. Reid might _actually_ be Harry Potter or something.

Hotch pulls Emily from the kitchen and mumbles the Harry Potter comment to her which makes her laugh and lean her breast against his arm. God, he wants her out of that dress so badly he can barely focus on anything else, but then he sees Reid scuffing down the hallway to meet them and he realizes _this is it_. Reid pulls up six feet from them, his hands shoved into his pockets and looking as if he’s retreated from his previous confidence in the kitchen. Something in Hotch growls _hell no_ and decides to get this show on the road whether anyone’s ready for it or not. The scotch has been surprisingly helpful with things like that this evening.

Emily’s still laughing as Hotch pulls her against his chest and then leans them both back into the hall wall. They aren’t far from his bedroom and he hopes it won’t take much effort to get them there. He wraps his arms around her waist and pops his chin on her shoulder to look at Reid.

“Hotch called you Harry Potter,” she grins.

“Oh yeah?” Reid looks delighted and rolls on his feet. “Nice.”

“What did you tell everyone?” Hotch is more than a bit curious.

“I said that Emily and I were about to give you a birthday threesome and the room communally agreed that they’d all go blind if they had to stick around for that. Well, everyone except Rossi. He wanted to watch,” Reid says with a straight face. Emily starts laughing so hard that she vibrates against Hotch making it even more urgent that she lose the dress.

“You see, I’m not sure if you’re joking about that or not,” Hotch murmurs.

“I’m joking about telling everyone. I’m not joking about the threesome.”

That statement pings Hotch’s cock hard enough that Emily must feel it because her laughter dies down.

“Come closer,” Hotch says and holds out one of his hands from Emily’s waist. Reid steps up and stares at the hand for an instant before wrapping his fingers in Hotch’s. “Every time she laughs I want to kiss her. I want to sample that happiness. Don’t you agree?”

Hotch cocks an eyebrow from where he’s staring at Reid over Emily’s shoulder and Reid seems to understand. He leans forward, his hand abandoning Hotch’s and bracing Emily’s face gently instead as he brushes her mouth with his lips. It’s barely a kiss but Emily goes completely still when it happens, like she’s afraid to ruin it. Hotch is so close that it almost feels like he’s receiving a kiss as well.

“Emily,” he whispers against her ear. “Remember how he kissed you that first time? Remember how it took your breath away?”

Her hand flashes up to Reid’s jaw and pulls him in. He moans quietly and then Hotch gets mesmerized by how their lips slip over each other, the soft gasping they make when they part, and the quick flick of Reid’s tongue when he asks for more. One of Emily’s hands loops around Reid’s waist and pulls him against her, which in turn pulls them both into Hotch. The collective noise they make is sinful, and suddenly Hotch wants them all to be naked. _Now._

“Spencer,” Emily whispers when they come up for air.

He smiles in that way that Hotch has come to identify as ‘Emily’s smile’. “Hello.”

“Yer such a dork,” she breathes just before she takes his mouth again and rings a helpless whimper from him in the process. “A sexy dork who kisses like he does it for a living…”

Hotch has to agree with her on that one. 

“Spencer,” he husks, trying to move this along the way his body is screaming that they should. “This amazing dress she’s wearing… it does up in the front. The tie on her left hip…”

Reid looks down while Emily skims kisses along his cheekbone and then sucks in his earlobe loudly causing both him and Hotch to hiss. Reid’s fingers twirl around the fabric stretched close over Emily’s hip before lacing the tie through them and gently pulling. The knot comes free easily and the sheer cloth falls away from her body parting up the center. Both men groan when they realize that it’s all she’s wearing besides her high heels.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Hotch growls and then bites her shoulder to stall the throb that arcs through him.

“It’s silk.” She leans her arm back to cup Hotch’s head in her palm, in the process arching her torso out of the dress even more. Reid makes a painful noise in the back of his throat and looks as though he’s about to spontaneously combust. “You can’t wear anything underneath - it leaves lines.”

Her body is like a blade curving dangerously between them waiting for a moment to cut them open. Hotch wrenches her chin sideways and takes her mouth brutally while she presses her hips towards Reid. He’s got a hand on the bare skin of her hip; his fingers are digging into her until her skin turns pale from the pressure.

Hotch rips his mouth away from hers, losing his control. “Fuck… Spence… help me with this.”

His hand grabs the edge of the dress that lines her shoulder and pulls it back and over. After a confused moment, Reid does the same thing with the other side. Emily shimmies between them to help, but also to rub herself tantalizingly against them both. Hotch thinks that he hears Reid swear quietly under his breath. _I hear ya, man._

“Is that better?” she coos innocently and both men come together without thinking to press her between them. Hotch rumbles something basic in his throat and Reid just nods vigorously. Then he mumbles something that sounds a lot like ‘goddamn fantastic’.

“You know what would be great?” she smiles, clearly pleased with herself. “If I could feel you too.”

Reid drags his eyes away from her body and stares at Hotch, lost. And then his hand moves on its own and starts pawing at his tie trying to loosen it but making the opposite happen instead.

“Hold on,” Hotch uses his SSAC voice and gains both of their attentions. “Bedroom. C’mon.”

They stumble down the hallway as one, hands roving everywhere and lips nipping at what bare skin they can catch. They nearly topple at the doorway and that’s because Reid doesn’t know where he’s going. Hotch reaches out and grabs him, pulling him back too hard and forcing them to bump together. Hotch takes advantage and sucks a deep, wet kiss from him before shoving him through the door to stand next to Emily who's dressed only in heels like some sort of porn star.

“Strip him out of his clothes, Em,” Hotch rumbles and then tries to set a land speed record to get out of his own.

From the corner of his eye he watches Emily peel Reid out of his shirt and tie. Reid just stares at her, almost helpless, eyes wide and arms hanging loosely at his sides. She’s giving him an amused smirk, obviously still riding the crest of desire and not reading too much into his pliability. Her hands land on his belt buckle and he twitches for the first time. Her fingers still and, as Hotch tosses away his own pants, he wonders if he should rejoin them or just wait to see what happens. She murmurs Reid’s name and then leans in for a gentle kiss. His eyes close and he raises one hand to trace the bare edge of her from hipbone to shoulder. Hotch can see her shiver even at a distance. She pulls away from his mouth and skims her lips over his jaw, down his long throat, distracting him as her fingers go to work on the belt again. When she pulls it free from his pants, Reid leans his head back and lets out a satisfied hiss to match the one the belt makes against the fabric loops. It’s like she’s working some sort of alchemy - desire from timidity. 

She moves lower sucking the knob of a collarbone as her fingers undo his fly. His pants are tenting obviously, and that sight produces a slow pull behind Hotch’s balls, but Emily doesn’t spend any time teasing him. She crouches low, licking a line down the center of Reid as she goes, and then hooks her fingers into the fabric hanging off his narrow hips and drags them along his legs to pool at his ankles. Reid is staring down at her, panting as his cock bounces free and she looks up at him and smiles. Then he’s energized and flailing, flipping off his shoes and wiggling free from the clothing binding his feet all the while staring at her. She laughs softly, the way she always does when he’s doing something unexpected and ridiculous, and Hotch suddenly gets why Reid’s never found it insulting: it’s adoring in the same way as Reid’s touches are. It’s like her laughter is love for all of the things that Reid’s been ridiculed for over the years. The understanding makes Hotch ache in a new way: how could they _not_ love her when she saw them so clearly? 

Emily stands again as Reid wrestles with his mismatched socks. He finally frees himself and they’ve switched positions - he’s kneeling at her feet and she’s staring down at him. His hand skims up the back of her calf and circles behind her knee. Her smile dims to something more heated. Then he traces his fingers back down to her ankle and slips a longer finger into the heel cup of her shoe.

“Step out,” he whispers and drops a kiss to the top of her thigh.

She makes a small noise and then bends her leg while bracing herself with a hand on his shoulder. Reid flips the shoe off, caressing her heel before setting her foot down again, and then reaches for the other one.

“They look painful,” he says as her other shoe drops to the carpet with a satisfying plunk.

“They get the job done. Beauty has its price.”

Reid rises up on his knees, his hands brushing along her legs until he can cup her ass with them and draw her close. He leaves a wet, open-mouthed kiss at the juncture of her thigh where it meets her hip that makes her moan out loud and lean into him. Her fingers tangle into his hair.

“You don’t have to wear something painful to get my attention,” Reid whispers against her and Hotch’s cock throbs dangerously.

He’s honestly never seen a display like this before. He’s never put this much care into undressing someone. It feels a little like pageantry, and then Hotch remembers how much Reid loves Halloween, Christmas, Mardi Gras… He keeps it under wraps most of the time but Reid loves the celebration of wonder - it’s almost like his religion. Suddenly his adoration makes perfect sense. 

Hotch’s hand has found its way to his cock and he is already perilously thick and heated in his grip just by watching them strip each other. His arousal is sluggish but sure of itself, confident in its power even if age and booze are doing their best to disappoint him. But right now he doesn’t know what to do next because he’s so mesmerized by them and is very much on the outside of what’s happening.

“I don’t know if I should watch or…” He says it without thinking, not really meaning to draw attention to his uncertainty. They both turn to look at him and belatedly he realizes that he’s stroking himself. His face heats up in the dark.

“No watching,” Reid blurts, eyes riveted to Hotch’s moving hand.

“We need you _with_ us, Aaron,” Emily adds. “I want you both.”

“Okay.” Hotch ducks his gaze and then moves towards them. He stands in front of Emily with Reid still on his knees between them. Emily reaches out and lures him in for a lingering kiss. He sighs against her lips, relieved to be adored as well, and then he feels Reid’s hand on his hip quickly followed by lips across the scars on his abdomen. Hotch’s eyes roll shut and he hisses as he tries to tamp down on the swell of pleasure building in his balls.

“Sorry,” Reid whispers and tries to pull back, but Hotch’s hand dives into his hair and massages the back of his head.

“Don’t be,” he growls. “Never been so turned on in my life.” Reid and his addictive damned sense of wonder… Hotch feels him lean in again licking down the line of hair from his navel. _Fuuuuuucccccck._

“Christ, you two…” Emily husks as she nuzzles into Hotch and watches Reid do the same. “Stupid hot. Really.”

Hotch hisses again as Reid’s fingers tickle the inside of his thighs and his cock twitches noticeably when he feels hot breath across his shaft. His fingers tighten in Reid’s hair as a warning. “Bed,” he grits through his teeth. “Before I lose it completely.”

Emily laughs quietly against him and Reid huffs a little in disappointment. Hotch decides to ignore them both as he stumbles to the bed before his knees cut out on him. He sinks down onto the mattress and watches as Reid gets to his feet and tries to kiss the laugh from Emily’s lips. They are beautiful together - complimentary pale curves and crisp angles, moving like they were born at the same time and fated to know each other’s intentions. Hotch doesn’t realize that he sighs aloud, but then they both look at him. Maybe it’s the booze talking, but in that moment he can’t believe how fortunate he is to have them both like this.

“C’mere,” he whispers to Emily as he settles himself back against the headboard. She kneels onto the bed and crawls up over his outstretched legs until her face is just inches from his. Her cheeks are flushed, eyes liquid and soft as she stares. She’s excited and amazed but there’s also devotion in that stare, as if he’s given her back something she thought was lost for good.

“Aaron,” she brushes against his lips as her eyes close. “I love you. You don’t know what this means to me…”

He has some idea as she takes his mouth gently and thoroughly. A moment later the mattress sinks as Reid joins them. They pull apart but his voice stops them.

“Kiss him again, Emily. _Show_ him what it means.”

Hotch groans and Emily slips in, clutching him close with one hand along his jaw and one hand back to brace against the headboard. He gets lost in her for a while - the little noises she makes when they kiss, the brush of her breast against his chest when they shift together, the smell of her, the softness of her hair skimming along his shoulder… And then she gasps and pulls away from his lips entirely. He’s pulsing all over, desire becoming rage in a second as he tries to figure out what’s happening and who’s hurting her. But it isn’t hurt. Her gaze is wide but unfocused and she’s panting, her blush now scorching down her neck and over her breasts. She quietly grunts - actually grunts - and then arches her back slightly. Hotch looks over her shoulder and discovers why. As quickly as it happened the first time, Hotch’s anger converts back into desire as he watches Reid’s arm move smoothly behind Emily. His other hand is softly stroking her hip like he’s admiring something priceless, but his stare is wholly focused on Hotch.

“She’s so wet, Aaron.” His voice is low and the tone makes Hotch’s cock twitch. “Already. Can you believe that? Amazing…”

Hotch chokes on whatever he thinks to say, too hypnotized by the muscles in Reid’s arm flexing and contracting, flexing and contracting…

“Spence!” Emily whines and curls her back. “Fuck…”

Reid bends until he can place a kiss at the base of her spine, his fingers still working her in a steady rhythm. “Yes?”

“Sonuvabitch…”

“Should I stop?”

“No… No! Just… ohgodpleasemovethemmoredifferentlyfuckingmagician’sfingers…”

He chuckles and Hotch gets a heated reminder that Reid hasn’t been a kid in a long time. God knows where he learned this but he’s confident with it. He twists to the side and his arm changes its angle. Emily immediately swears and pumps her hips back towards him. Hotch feels wetness pooling across his stomach but can’t look away from Reid.

“You’re glorious, Emily,” he says like an awed little boy, but still smiling like a self-assured lover. “I always thought you would be when I imagined this… imagined us…”

“What did you imagine?” Hotch is surprised to hear himself ask.

“Her,” Reid gets serious, his smile slipping from him as he stares at Hotch. “This beautiful, replete woman letting herself go… being absolutely free in front of me. Asking for what she wants, and receiving it gratefully. I imagined myself becoming enthralled, losing myself… if I ever got the chance.”

It feels as though Hotch’s experiences are falling from Reid’s lips. Wasn’t that the dangerous freedom that Hotch had been chasing after ever since their first night together? He nods at Reid in silent confederacy. 

“And this? Did you imagine this too?”

“I imagined all of us… as one. Just a heaving tangle of longing finally, exhaustively, experiencing a connection that has eluded us all our lives…”

Hotch thinks back to their last time. Was that where Reid had gone to in his mind? Did he come only after picturing them orgasmicly happy?

“Good Christ, if you keep talking like that I’m gonna come right now…” Emily threatens.

“If that’s what you want-”

“It’s not what I want! Fuck, Spence… I want to enjoy you two a bit first…”

“Oh. In that case…” Reid’s arm stops moving and he backs away. Emily lets out a frustrated howl and Hotch nearly seconds it at Reid’s sudden reversal.

“Reid!”

“Turn over, Em,” Reid says calmly. “Lean back against Aaron. Please.”

Emily huffs but turns around, her face a mottled mix of aggravation and anticipation. Hotch spreads his legs wide so she can settle between them. Her back is warm against his chest and he swallows down a moan as his full cock gets pleasantly pinned by the curve of her bum. He buries his face in her hair and wraps his arms around her, fingers of one hand absently ghosting over a breast.

“Nice,” she murmurs appreciatively and arches a little into his grip. “You know what I like.”

“Mmmmmm,” he agrees and licks at her neck.

Reid watches the exchange with interest, like he’s cataloging it for future reference. His eyes become riveted to Hotch’s hand at her breast. He kneads it, cupping her until she plumps in his grip, and then releasing her teasing her sensitive skin with light touches after such intensity. He does it slower and more methodically than usual so that Reid can catch every nuance. He’s breathing hard through his mouth, chest heaving as he watches, and the sight does something to Hotch knowing that he’s silently sharing the knowledge of her pleasure with this man. 

“She appreciates a little force,” he murmurs and Reid’s heated gaze meets his temporarily. “She’s not delicate… she won’t break…”

His cock throbs against Emily’s ass and she keens, increasing the pressure on him as well and pushing into his hand again. Hotch groans in warning and then sees Reid lick his lips. Emily bends her knees, bracing her heels on the mattress to get better leverage and exposing herself at the same time. Reid’s eyes slip down from her chest, and he licks his lips again. Hotch gets a perverse idea that makes his pulse pound in his skull.

“Spencer,” he murmurs and waits until he catches his stare again. Reid looks a little overstimulated, as if he’s blown a circuit and is waiting for someone to flip the breaker back. His gaze is earnest, waiting for guidance. 

“If you think she enjoyed your fingers…” Hotch lets the sentence trail off meaningfully and then drifts a hand down to the inside of Emily’s thigh and slowly spreads her wider.

“You’re a baaaad man, Hotchner,” she whimpers with a sharp edge and then curls against the arm that’s still holding her close. He grins against her ear, still watching Reid. He sees the moment when the circuit reconnects and Reid’s eyebrows rise, saying ‘Oh, of course’.

“Just for you, sweetheart,” Hotch chuckles. “And now for him.” 

Reid sinks low flattening himself along the bed between Emily’s legs. She moans just at the sight of it - he isn’t even near her yet - her eyes locked onto the curls draping loosely from the top of his head. Hotch’s hand on her thigh drifts lower, gently tangling into those same curls and guiding him to where he needs to be. Reid doesn’t require encouragement but the stab of lust it produces in Hotch’s groin makes it worth it. He bites his lip and presses against Emily’s ass until he sees stars to prevent himself from losing control. Emily swears loudly an instant before Reid’s mouth connects.

“Goddammit, this is gonna get loud…” she warns. 

“I certainly hope so.”

Reid licks into Emily tentatively and her whole body reacts as if she’s been electrocuted. Hotch shushes ‘Easy, darling’ into her cheek and tightens his arm over her chest, but he also sees one of Reid’s hands push her hip down forcefully before he dips in again. His tongue flicks and she bows under their grip but between the two of them she’s effectively pinned. Reid snuggles a little closer and then outlines her edges with just the tip of his tongue. Emily whines and bites her lip, her hips trying futilely to push closer to his mouth. He does it over and over until Hotch can feel her pulse fluttering against his cheek. She’s whimpering, a fine sweat breaking out across her and heating her skin under Hotch’s hands, but Reid doesn’t seem to notice.

“A little more, Spencer,” he nudges, taking pity on her. “You can lose yourself in her for a while…”

Emily moans at his words and then moans again when Reid latches onto her with a soft sucking he can hear. Emily squirms and Reid’s fingers at her hip bite into her leaving pale crescents against her skin. His free hand skims even lower and by the way Emily suddenly pleads, Hotch assumes that Reid has stepped it up a notch and is teasing around her anus. That pings his dick so hard that he cries out with her, both of them arching closer to Reid against their will.

Then Reid grunts, pushing his face into her and lapping roughly. His legs collect under him, his spine curls, and he’s going at her with his lips and tongue so forcefully that his head and neck are undulating from the give and take of his rhythm. Emily is out of control and out of her mind - Hotch can barely hold her. She’s breathing open-mouthed, harshly, like she can’t catch any oxygen at all. Her eyes are clamped shut and her back is bowing away from him so sharply that you could probably see daylight between them. She’s streaming an endless, incoherent line of moaning and profanity that is occasionally punctuated by their names. He pictures her coming against Reid’s mouth. He imagines her scream of pleasure and the glistening evidence of it on Reid’s lips when he pulls away afterwards. In his mind, he hears himself begging Reid to let him lick him clean. 

Hotch is probably one random hip jab away from coming in a messy splash along Emily’s back. He’s wedged too tightly between her ass cheeks and she’s almost bouncing in her attempt to get more of Reid’s attention. The stimulation is burning a hole through the core of him: she’s so soft, so warm and wet, she’s crying too loudly just the way that always undoes him, his nerves endings are cranked to eleven with the thought of he and Reid holding her down and messing with her so thoroughly…

“Fuck… fuckfuckfuck… stop. Please stop. Stopstopstopstop…”

Miraculously, Reid hears him and actually does stop. Emily howls like she’s been stabbed through the chest and Hotch knows that he’ll pay for this somewhere down the line. Reid looks up at them, Emily smeared across his face, and his gaze is terrified trying to figure out what he did wrong.

“What the _fuck_ , Aaron!” Emily growls.

“God, Em, I’m sorry…” he gasps. “I got too close. I… I need him to fuck you. I need that to happen before I come. Can we do that, sweetheart? Would it be okay if he fucked you?”

She reaches back and digs her nails into the back of his neck wrenching his mouth to hers and kissing him as if to hurt him. “Jesus fucking Christ, Aaron…”

“Is it okay?” he breathes into her mouth a moment before she bites down and draws blood.

“Yes. Hell yes.” There’s a desperate edge to her voice and he thinks that her stalled arousal might actually be causing her pain.

“I… ummm… hello?” They both look back at Reid and he’s just confused, worried lines pulling at his mouth and the corners of his eyes. “What’s happening right now?”

“We want you to fuck me,” Emily states matter-of-factly as all color drains from Reid’s face. “Aaron’s gonna lose it if you don’t. And I probably will too.”

Reid swallows noticeably. “A-are you sure?” His eyes flick to Hotch.

“I’m more than sure,” Hotch pants. “But you don’t need my permission, only hers.”

Reid looks to Emily, hope and disbelief warring for supremacy. “Em?”

“Come here, babe,” she reaches for him and he leans forward meeting her halfway. She licks the taste of her from his mouth. His lips fall open and he lets her do what she likes with him for a moment. Then her hand lands over his suprasternal notch, drifting slowly down his torso, flicking the muscles of his stomach, twirling the soft hair between his legs, and then finally circling his cock resting hard against his thigh. He hisses into her mouth and lets his eyes slip closed.

“We’ve waited long enough, haven’t we?” she whispers as she works him. Hotch watches Reid twitch as she moves, smoothing wetness over the head of him again and again. “Never thought we’d get here…”

“Tell me I’m not about to wake up alone in my bed at home again…” he mumbles, eyes still firmly shut. Emily lines the edge of her lip with his wetness and then forces her way into his mouth. His eyes flick open in surprise and then shut again as he groans and lets her kiss him as if it’s for the last time.

“Wake up, Spencer. I’m right here, waiting…”

Reid makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat and yanks his mouth from hers as he pushes her firmly back against Hotch. It’s so sudden, so harsh that Hotch wonders if he’s suddenly changed his mind or found something deeply offensive about this. He can feel Emily suck in a huge breath and hold it as if she fears the same thing. Reid lunges forward, pulling Emily’s hand from his cock making it bounce away from his pelvis as he moves. He braces all of his weight on one arm pressed into the mattress next to Hotch’s stretched thigh and then unceremoniously enters her. Emily gasps at the suddenness of it all and goes completely still. Hotch tenses, preparing to act if this all goes to hell. He looks down when a moment passes where no one does anything. Heat flares over him when he realizes that Reid’s slipped inside her, but just the tip of him. He’s holding himself there as if giving her a last chance to change her mind. He’s so flushed and hard, Hotch has no idea how he manages the restraint, and then he looks at Reid’s face as he stares Emily down, serious as he’s probably ever been in his life.

“I’m awake,” he says, as Emily continues to hold her breath. “Finally.”

Then he pushes into her right up to the hilt. Her breath bursts out of her in a rush and both of them press back into Hotch making him suck on his broken lip to focus his control again. Reid hold still again for a second, deep inside, air hitching out of him unsteadily, before he pulls back and out almost completely. He arches into her once more, again making her body press back into Hotch, and everyone groans together.

“Oh, fuck, Spence… that’s good,” Emily hisses, hand wrapping around the arm that’s bolstering his weight. So Reid drives into her again, and again.

Emily lifts her legs to wrap around Reid’s hips and it changes their angle. She whimpers when he pushes back but Hotch can see him hesitate. He starts up a rhythm that you could set your watch by and Emily moans, deep and satisfied, with each stroke. But Hotch sees Reid’s serious expression, his focus that isn’t really aimed at any of them, the white-knuckled pressure of his hand pressing into the mattress at Hotch’s side, and he knows that Reid is curling up into his mind again. The moment has gotten _big_ on him and he’s struggling under the force of it. Hotch doesn’t think first, he just acts, and he doesn’t know if he would’ve done it for anyone else. He reaches out and strokes his fingers along Reid’s side, just a light brush against his straining muscles and stark ribs. The sensation makes Reid’s breath hiccup and his stare breaks as he turns, blinking, to look at Hotch instead.

“Spencer,” he says quietly, counting Reid’s ribs as he passes his fingers over them. _One… two… three… four…_ “What does she feel like?”

Reid blinks again as his body keeps working, his hair swinging in front of his eyes. “She’s… she’s like… e-everything… collapsing back into… the tiniest, most f-focused point in space… She’s like the B-big Crunch…”

Hotch smiles, still stroking the ribs. _Three… two… one…_ “But she’s not the entire universe, Spence, and this isn’t as… cataclysmic as all of that. She’s the woman you share your lunches with. She’s the one who taught you how to play Halo, and to slow dance. She’s the girl who tells you dirty jokes in Russian when you get stressed out at work, and she’s the one you turn to when you’re scared or upset and don’t know what to do about it.”

Emily cries gently just below Hotch’s head, as if his words are meant for her as much as for Reid. Reid looks down at her then, his gaze softening like he’s seeing her for the first time tonight. His mouth drops open as his pace slows, and he whispers her name.

“She’s the woman you’ve wanted for as long as you can remember, even if you didn’t know what that meant. And she’s the friend you’ve had for just as long. Remember when I said that she sees things in us? She _sees_ you, Spencer…”

“I love what I see.” Emily reaches up and holds his hair back from his face, her gaze soft, warm, like some quiet shelter away from the world. Reid stills his hips and drops down to her mouth, kissing her with a slow drag of his lips. “I love you,” she breathes when their mouths part. Hotch knows this is different than when she says it to him. The word takes on another color when she says it to Reid, and even though he thinks he should, Hotch finds that he doesn’t mind that at all.

“I adore you, Emily,” Reid whispers as he cups her face. “Sorry I went away there for a while. I… I just never thought we’d be like this together. I guess… I started focusing on falling short…”

“S’okay,” she nips his lower lip. “Aaron brought you back.”

Reid looks up at Hotch, face flushed, lips swollen, hair a messy knot of tangles. “Aaron…”

“Someone recently informed me that sex is easy. It’s our brains that make it difficult.” Hotch smiles. “Just wanted to get you out of your head and back here with us. Because no one’s come yet and that would be a shame, wouldn’t it?”

“Is _that_ what you want?” Reid asks genuinely.

“Yes, of course. I want to come. I want to watch her come with you. I want us all mixed together in an exhausted, sated mess when it’s all over. I want to love you both and not worry about what that means or what the future holds for us.” He pauses. “I suppose that’s more than just an orgasm, isn’t it?”

“You never talk like this,” Emily stares up at him in awe.

“He does to me,” Reid adds, never looking away from Hotch. And Hotch wants to kiss him so badly in that moment that it makes his lips hurt.

Reid tears his eyes away and leans down over Emily again, brushing her nose with the tip of his. “Let’s give him what he wants, Em.” He kisses her and then arches his hips into her that makes them both whine and then smile together. He falls right back into their rhythm as if they’ve never stopped, but now he’s skimming her cheeks with his lips, whispering things into her hair as she twists beneath him. 

They move more quickly, trying to sync up their bodies to flow together naturally, as one. Hotch tries to cradle them, feeling like the outer shell that’s holding them together. His hard on is painful, pinched and desperate against Emily as Reid shoves into them both relentlessly. He doesn’t even think there’s room for him to come if he wanted to; there’s no way for him to ease himself. 

Emily’s whining now, as if she’s stalled even though the way she’s moving with Reid tells him that she loves the feel of him. Hotch snakes a hand between their chests and kneads her roughly, giving her the edge he knows gets her off. She keens and arches into his hand, and Reid sees it and gets the picture. He drops his mouth to her other breast and sucks hard, making the sound crude and lascivious. It creates this current that circles Hotch’s balls uselessly with nowhere to go and he hisses at the new sensation, trying to stop himself from throwing them off and coming mindlessly. Emily bows away from both Hotch and the mattress as Reid’s mouth pulls on her without pity, and for a split second Hotch is free and feels the full force of his arousal slam to the head of his cock. Then Emily crashes back down with a yelp and Hotch grits his teeth against the surge of pressure. He’s not going to make it; at some point he’ll have delayed too long and be unable to come, and then he doesn’t know how he’ll release himself from all of this tension.

Reid is stroking hard and fast but his feet slip on the sheets and his arms can’t do anything but hold him above them. He needs something more too. Hotch watches as Reid tries to move his hands around their bodies, to try and find a way of anchoring their movements. But he’s too far from the headboard and with both Emily and Hotch propped in a sitting position, he can’t use the mattress below them to much effect either. Then Hotch figures it out even as his mind starts to shut down.

“Spencer,” he husks, pulling one of Reid’s hands away from the bed and placing it along his shoulder. Reid’s fingers immediately bite down and hold tight to balance himself. “For leverage…”

Reid’s gaze widens in understanding and then his other hand grips onto Hotch’s opposite shoulder. His chest muscles flex as he curls his backbone and pulls himself into them with the added force from his arms, and the new position makes them all yell ‘Oh!’ simultaneously. Reid’s hips snap faster and faster, his strokes pushing Emily up and back along Hotch’s chest. Hotch is about ready to blow. Emily is crying out ‘Fuck!’ at random intervals, and the whole bed is now creaking dangerously with their movements. The bedside table bumps against the wall. Hotch distantly hears the thuds of his watch and a book hitting the carpet under the skip of their skin and ragged breathing.

“Is this what you wanted?”

Hotch opens his eyes and sees Reid staring back at him, sweat dampening his hair and dappling his forehead.

“Did you want me to fuck both of you at the same time?” Reid pants and Emily cries ecstatically beneath him. Hotch leans forward with a growl, pushing them all that much closer, and kisses Reid roughly. Reid pushes back, forcing his way hard into Hotch’s mouth and sucking until they both can’t breathe. He arches his back sharply, fingers digging into Hotch even more as he gasps and then kisses Hotch as deeply as before. Hotch clutches Reid’s jaw to hold him close even as they come up for air and then he simply wheezes ‘Want you’. 

“Oh, fuck…” Emily shouts and then grips Reid’s sides for all she’s worth yanking him into her. “Christ, now, Spence…. _now!_ Come with me, baby… please…”

Reid pulls back from Hotch’s mouth but still grips him tightly. His eyes slam shut and his mouth hangs open as he bends and curls to get the best, sharpest angle he can manage and he hammers it home in four or five blindingly strong strokes. Emily weeps out a loud, sustained cry that rises and falls in time with the frantic thrust of their bodies and Reid flashes one hand down to grab her and crush her to his chest. Then his whole body strains and lengthens as he lets go, stretching himself so his chin rests on Emily’s head and he breathes through it, hips circling on autopilot. 

“Em… oh god… Emily…”

Hotch closes his eyes and listens to them call to each other as they come down. He can’t do anything else. He’s trapped and he can’t come. He just needs to give them a moment or two to catch their breath and then he can move and possibly avoid stroking out when his orgasm breaks.

“Em…”

“Spence, babe… so good…”

He can hear them kissing - gentle, relieved sounds under their ragged breathing.

“Love you.”

“Love you too.” More kissing.

“Hotch?” That’s Emily. “Aaron?”

He starts shaking and tries to button it down. He doesn’t trust himself to speak - anything could set him off and if he doesn’t do it right, it’ll be awful.

“Hey, Spence, get up.”

“What?”

“Get up. Look at him. He didn’t come. He’s still digging into my back like a two by four.”

“Oh,” Reid says, and then follows it up with “ _Ohhhhhhh…_ ”

Then the tremendous press of them is gone. Hotch breathes out roughly and sags down along the pillows until he’s almost laying flat. His hand moves to his dick and he moans with the anticipation of relief, but then someone grabs it and pulls his wrist away. His eyes flick open and Reid is there, fucked out and pink all over, staring down at him. Hotch makes a tortured sound that might have originally begun as ‘why?’ but Reid just smiles and pushes until Hotch is lying on his back.

“S’okay, we’ve got you, Aaron.” He dips in for a soft kiss that Hotch can’t return because all of his brainpower is focused on his aching cock. “Gonna take care of you…”

And then warm wetness circles his dick and he looks down his body and cries when he sees Emily’s hair spilling across his hips. She sucks him in deep, not wasting time, and he nearly comes the moment he hits the back of her throat.

“She’s got you good, doesn’t she? She loves you so much, Aaron… We’re lucky, so lucky to be wanted like this…”

Hotch reaches up and pulls Reid to his mouth brutally. Reid opens up with a whimper and Hotch rushes in. One of Reid’s hands skims through Hotch’s hair until it cups the back of his skull holding him close with an odd sort of reverence. Hotch moans and Reid matches it as Emily continues with her soft sucking. Lucky indeed, and terribly, terribly wanted…

Emily’s tongue presses him to the roof of her mouth while lining the thick vein underneath with pressure that doesn’t come close to what he withstood before, but nonetheless breaks him completely.

“Emily!” He rips away from Reid’s mouth and tries to pull her off but she digs her fingers into his hips and gives him just enough room while still taking almost all of him. He cries out and arches into her mouth. Reid holds him down by the shoulders and whispers things to him: _Got you, Aaron… we’re both right here… let go, let it all go for us…_

Hotch is completely focused on the terrible, pressing ache until it bursts and changes into a full-body pleasure that lifts him out of himself as he fills Emily’s mouth. He distantly hears her choking a little, feels the strong suck as she swallows around him, and he leans into the brush of Reid’s lips across his. He lets his body do what it wants and just floats on the surface of sensation, bobbing gratefully, and feeling the tremendous tide of love rush towards him. When he finally comes ashore again, he opens his eyes and sees Reid staring down at him, a curious smile curling one side of his mouth. Hotch reaches up and brushes hair away from his face, skimming a sharp cheekbone as he goes.

“Hey,” Reid murmurs. “Happy Birthday.”

Relief and post-orgasmic delirium combine to produce deep, rolling laughter in his chest. He closes his eyes and lets it have him until it produces tears. It only gets worse when he hears Emily crawl up beside them and huff sarcastically.

“Oh man, I think we broke him.”

And then he’s gone, laughing until his stomach hurts and he can’t breathe. He ends up coughing to catch his breath and wrapping an arm around each of them to pull them down with him. They snuggle against him, Emily between he and Reid but arms and legs all tangled together.

“I’m only forty-eight,” he says when he can manage it.

“You’re fifty-two, Hotch.”

Hotch looks over at Reid’s wide, hazel stare across Emily’s shoulder. He shrugs as he smiles. “Math. It’s what I do.”

Hotch leans up and gives him a soft kiss. “It is, but keep that to yourself. I’m forty-eight until I decide to retire.”

Emily laughs into his chest, and he dips down to give her a lingering kiss as well.

“You should be crowing about having your first three-way in your fifties,” she giggles into his mouth.

He gets serious in a heartbeat. “I love you, sweetheart. I’m not good at saying so, but… you’ve made me so happy. Both of you.” He looks up quickly to catch Reid’s gaze as well. “Whatever happens from here on, I’ll never forget this. I’ll never forget how great it felt to be with you. Thank you.”

Both Emily and Reid look stunned and just blink for a moment.

“I think you’re pretty good at expressing how you feel when you want to,” Emily says quietly and then burrows into his chest with a sigh.

“I agree,” adds Reid and then drapes an arm over both of them and shuffles closer.

Hotch smiles, leaning back into the pillows and allowing himself to sink down into the exhaustion that’s creeping at his edges. “Okay. Go to sleep.” And they do, almost immediately, in a tangled, warm lump where it’s hard to distinguish one from another.


	13. Chapter 13

Hotch wakes with arms wrapped around him and hair in his face. There’s a dull pounding behind his eyes and his brain offers the word ‘scotch’ helpfully. Considering how much he drank, it isn’t so bad, and the warmth of the hug he’s in mitigates it as well. He closes his eyes and snuggles into the hair with a groan of contentment and wonders if a little morning sex might help his hangover. Emily’s fond of morning sex…

There’s the sound of a camera shutter clicking. Once, twice, and then an amused giggle. He blinks awake and tries to focus. Emily’s leaning in the bedroom doorway, hair wet and draped in his too-big navy bathrobe that emphasizes her curves and paleness. She’s holding up her cell phone with a mischievous grin. He looks down suddenly and realizes that it’s Reid wrapped around him, and then he glares back at Emily who’s doing her best not to cackle.

“Whatever you just recorded, erase it immediately,” he hisses threateningly.

“No way,” she grins. “I just found this year’s Christmas card photo. Gonna Photoshop elf hats on you two and everything.”

“Jesus…” he mutters and she clamps a hand over her mouth in an effort to stay quiet.

“You’re adorable. When’s the last time anyone called you that? Just enjoy it.” She’s grinning like a maniac and then it melts into something softer as she leans back against the doorframe. “We’re definitely doing this again,” she adds quietly.

“Yes we are,” he agrees and tries to tell his dick that it probably won’t happen _right now_. But soon. Definitely soon.

“Good,” Reid mumbles sleepily.

“Oh, so you’re actually awake, are you?” Hotch looks down at him, but he’s mostly hair and arms from his vantage point.

“Provisionally.” Reid stretches like a cat in the sun as he yawns, and then grips Hotch even closer when he settles again. “Don’t like mornings.”

“Who does?” Emily says.

“You know, one of the benefits of three people in bed is that it should actively discourage spooning with at least one of the participants,” Hotch says dryly.

“Hmmmmm,” Reid actually snuggles _closer_. “Emily isn’t in bed. Besides, you’re really comfy.”

From the doorway Emily guffaws. Hotch can feel Reid grin against his chest.

“What about the touch phobia?” Hotch asks, getting amused and a little aroused in spite of himself.

“That only applies to people I don’t trust,” Reid gusts in a tone that suggests it’s a fact everyone already knows.

Well, Hotch didn’t know and suddenly finding out floors him a little. He blinks, hand falling into Reid’s hair absently, and then he looks up to find Emily watching them with gentle indulgence. Hotch raises his eyebrows in a gesture of ‘Who knew?’, or perhaps ‘Help me’, and Emily just smiles and drops her phone into the pocket of his robe.

“I’m gonna go make coffee,” she says and Reid makes a muffled sound of interest against Hotch. “It’ll give you guys some time to figure out this… snuggling thing.” She makes a vague, airy gesture in their direction. Hotch’s face heats.

She heads out and then ducks back quickly with a wink. “If it takes longer than five minutes, leave a sock on the doorknob.”

Hotch feels one of his SSAC scowls settle into place as she skips off to the kitchen, laughing. “I don’t know what she’s talking about,” he growls.

“Me neither.” Reid pauses. “I’d need way more than five minutes…”

Hotch’s cock pings but so does his skull. He shuffles a little to cover both. “Oh yeah?”

“Uh-huh,” Reid nods against him. “You’ve gotta have standards.”

That produces a chuckle and then Reid’s sleepy head rises from Hotch’s chest as he leans in for a brief kiss. “Morning.”

“Good morning back,” Hotch smiles and then draws him in with a hand along his jaw for another slow, sleepy kiss. They stretch it out a little, just slipping over one another with no desire to hurry. Hotch’s headache recedes, and his morning hard on persists, but he’s happy to just float in the moment and not think too hard about what’s next. When they part they’re both a little breathless, but Hotch doesn’t feel pressured to say or do anything more.

“Thank you,” Reid murmurs eventually.

“What for?”

“For making this just as much about us as it is about her.”

Hotch feels his face get hot again. “I’ve never been with a man,” he admits quietly.

“Me either.”

“So… where does that leave us?”

Reid shrugs. “Dunno. I guess we just play this out and see where it leads us… for all of us.”

Hotch nods, slowly and thoughtfully, tracing a finger down Reid’s neck and across his collarbone.

“Why did you come back?” he asks. “You clearly showed up to the party with a plan. What changed your mind between our last attempt and now?”

Reid’s lips tighten as he takes a moment to consider. 

“That last time… I showed up with the best of intentions but it just wasn’t _right_. I couldn’t get out of my head, I couldn’t let go. And you guys were both so kind afterwards… I just felt like I’d let you down. It was all on me, ya know? And it hurt that I couldn’t do it.”

“Spencer-”

Reid waves him off. “I thought you guys would be fine, that you’d bounce back. I mean, I was hurting that Emily finally knew how I felt and I couldn’t do anything about it, but I figured that it might just be merely disappointing for you two. Not a dealbreaker or anything.”

He sighs and then shakes his head. 

“Then one evening a few weeks later I came back to the office to get something and saw the two of you in the bullpen. I caught part of your conversation and realized it was more than just disappointment. For both of you. I really hadn’t expected that. It took a little while for that to settle in and for me to work up my nerve again, but that’s when I changed my mind.”

Oh. _Oh._

Hotch strokes his hand back up to hold Reid’s jaw. He stares at him for a long time, but Reid holds his gaze without flinching. _We really are more alike than not._

“We all screwed up that night,” Hotch starts. “Maybe that’s normal with this sort of thing until you figure it out, I don’t know. What I do know is that my original motivations when I suggested this would’ve doomed it even if everything else had gone right. It’s not on you.”

“What do you mean ‘original motivations’?”

“I came up with the idea out of fear. I was afraid of losing Emily. I was terrified that I wasn’t enough.”

“And now?”

Hotch caresses the line of Reid’s cheek the way Reid would do it to Emily. “It’s no longer about fear and it’s no longer about just her.”

Reid smiles and then leans his head into the warm spot between Hotch’s neck and shoulder. Hotch wraps his arms around him tightly. Yeah, okay, this snuggling thing is fine…

“Do you think she actually went to make coffee, or that she just wanted us to talk?” Reid mumbles.

“I hope it was both. My hangover could use some coffee.”

“You know that the pain traditionally associated with too much drinking is actually a combination of dehydration, blood vessel dilation, and mild insulin shock from the inhibition of sugars processed by the body due to fatty compound build-up in the liver.”

“If only my headache believed in chemistry…” Hotch mutters before dropping his lips into Reid’s hair. “Can you stay for a while? Maybe spend the day with us?”

“Sure.” Hotch can feel Reid grinning against his throat and it makes him warm everywhere. It’s Saturday, and he’s hoping that he can convince them both to spend the weekend. But one step at a time.

“Great. Now let’s go see if she made coffee or not.”

Reid makes a reluctant whine.

“If she didn’t, we’ll have to come up with a way to punish her.”

Reid shows some interest at that, leaning up on one elbow and considering the doorway before oozing out of bed and mumbling ‘Okay’ while scratching at the fantastic tangle of his hair. Hotch laughs at the sight of him, bare-assed, stumbling towards caffeine.

“C’mon,” he calls back. “I’m not sure what I’m hoping for…”

“Pants?” Hotch suggests loudly and waits for a response. All he gets is a muttered ‘Nah’ and Hotch decides that he’s just fine with that.

He finds that he’s fine with a lot of things, and that he can learn to be fine with others. He’s fine with not having a plan for them and just seeing where they end up. He’s fine with loving a man as well as a woman; he’s fine with those loves being different from each other yet still complete. He’s fine with telling his son when the time comes, and he’s fine with respecting his lovers’ wishes and not telling the team for the sake of privacy. He’s fine with the logistical battles and the weird little domestic fights and the territorial hiccups that arise. And he’s also strangely fine when Emily sits them all down and nervously explains how she’s turned out to be the lucky 0.1% that you only read about in warning labels on contraceptive packaging. But that all comes later.

Right now he’s emphatically staying out of his own head and discovering that it’s the easiest way to love.


End file.
